Anti-Semitism from Morocco to France to America

Tuesday, August 03, 2010 |
Israel Today Staff

Anti-Semitism around the world continues to grow. A series of events this week demonstrated that it is not only in the Muslim world and liberal Europe that the phenomenon is gaining speed, but also in America.

In Morocco, a Jewish businessman told Israel National News that he was shocked at the weekend to find that his store in the town of Mogador had become the focus of an anti-Israel demonstration.

Shop owner Noam Nir said such demonstrations are becoming more commonplace in Morocco, as evidenced by a large protest against King Mohammed's only Jewish advisor around the time of Passover.

Nir noted that in Morocco, there is no distinction made between Zionism and Judaism, so criticism and hostility toward Israel is the same as criticism and hostility toward all Jews. As such, relations between local Muslims and Jews are deteriorating fast.

In Paris, police late last week were informed that a dozen kosher shops and a Jewish school were defaced with swastikas. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe decried the vandalism as an act of anti-Semitic hatred and vowed to fight it. The incident occurred just days after dozens of Jewish tombstones in the northern town of Strasbourg were desecrated.

In the US, the anti-Semitism remains slightly more subtle, with the overriding focus being on the Jews of Israel and their policies toward the Palestinian Arabs.

The Arab American National Museum in Michigan this week launched a campaign to raise funds to erect a statue of shamed former White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent, saw her 67-year career come to an abrupt end in June when she told an interviewer that the Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go "back to Germany and Poland."

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